Faithful plantings
Olivia Harrison has made some exceptional plantings, including large groups of orchids and Primula vialii, the conical, scarlet tips of which would make elegant hats for dwarves. Sun-lovers include plantings of Paeonia tenuifolia from the Caucasus, Cistus creticus from the Eastern Mediterranean and Eucomis species from South Africa. The size of these plantings recalls the massed groups and broad belts that Henry Correvon admired for their natural effect more than 100 years ago. Shade dwellers have fared equally well, including Veratrum nigrum and Gentiana asclepiadea from the Alps and Kirengeshoma palmata from Japan. Campanulas, dianthus, aquilegias and Erigeron karvinskianus have seeded around and bind the plantings together.
The years of neglect brought two benefits. First, some of the tree seedlings that arrived with the birds have managed to place themselves in cracks in the original stones and boulders. Stunted pine trees grow among the rocks exactly as they do in the Alps. Second, the shelter trees that Sir Frank Crisp planted around the edge of the rock garden have grown to a great height and created sheltered, shady, humus-rich areas for new plantings— some of them astonishingly beautiful.
Mrs Harrison has taken superb advantage of the soil and the dappled shade to establish a valley of tree ferns, a sweep of Podo
phyllum ‘Spotty Dotty’ and expansive beds for blue Meconopsis betonicifolia and the giant lily Cardiocrinum giganteum. These luxuriant plantings, surrounded by huge boulders, are perhaps the most impressive part of the whole rock garden today.